The community policing scheme launched nearly eight years ago in Kozhikode city and rural police station limits is losing its sheen owing to shortage of funds and adequate field support.
Regular beat patrolling or monthly review meetings are literally rare to take forward the activities of the much-lauded initiative.
The community liaison groups formed to support the police initiative and act as a link between the department and the general community remain dormant thanks to lack of proper coordination by beat officers concerned. As a result, local development and law and order issues are now hardly a concern for the initiative.
Protection of elderly people, regular patrol, legal aid, and free medication—some of the most-highlighted areas of intervention by the community police—have been ignored due largely to the weakened functioning of community liaison groups.
According to residents associations in the city, the objectives of the project will have to be reviewed again in such a way to reintroduce it covering neglected areas and taking the latest needs into account. With the strengthening of residents forums in the city and rural areas, community policing schemes have been going into the reverse with no fresh initiatives, they say.
Till recently, the scheme had been a solace for more than 15 tribal settlements in Kozhikode district. With the entry of more charitable organisations and voluntary groups, community policing projects that once reached out to them came to an abrupt end. The Tribal Janamaithri, an initiative launched exclusively for tribespeople, also proved ineffective.
The scheme had covered several tribal hamlets in Kodenchery panchayat where youths were addicted to drugs and alcohol. Moreover, anti-social activities in and around such settlements had been brought under control after the scheme was rolled out. However, as years passed, field interventions got reduced to just annual gatherings on occasions like Onam. Local panchayat officials also point out that the scheme is slowly on its way out in the absence of proper planning.
An ambitious project
It was in 2008 that the community policing scheme was launched in the State with the support of 20 police stations. In 2012, the number of stations touched 248. In subsequent years, a majority of 455 police stations had been covered by the scheme. Nearly 1,500 policemen had been trained to work as beat officers and to coordinate the initiative.
Policemen who are now part of the scheme say the project, visibly low-profile now, gets limited attention because of the larger law and order maintenance responsibilities on local police stations.
They also claim that the contacts earlier established with the community through the Janamaithri scheme still remains intact, and it comes to their support on crucial occasions.